Journal
by KF fan
Summary: It's a journal not a diary, okay? It doesn't matter that Jinx suggested it. I'm a guy and a speedster. It's a journal.
1. Chapter 1

July 11, 2007

I'm not going to say "Dear Diary".

I'm just not.

That's what girls write. That's not what this is. It's a journal. I'm a guy. Guys write in journals. I'm going along with this at Jinx's suggestion. But I'm not going to say "Dear Diary".

I never told her but I considered doing something like this when I first became Kid Flash. I thought I should chronicle the physical changes to my body. Nobody could tell what would happen to me, not even Flash. I was just a skinny 11 year old kid who suddenly had super speed. And I thought maybe keeping notes would help me in my crime fighting. What were each villain's tendencies in fights, that sort of thing.

But I couldn't leave anything around that would hint at my secret identity. My family didn't know about me. The truth is, they didn't much care about me. And my parents occasionally thought the new Wally they saw after I'd gotten super speed, the me in my ultra baggy clothes and omnipresent wool hat, was taking drugs. They searched my walk in closet sized room a few times looking for who knows what. I wasn't that kind of speed freak but they didn't know. So, I had to try and just keep in my head recollections of how my body changed with puberty and speed force combined and the details of my missions.

Jinx suggested this, saying it would be good to have a record of how I thought about being a Flash and a Titan, all the other heroes and our life together. She said that reading her old diaries was fascinating just to see how her perspective had changed.

Well, this is going to be a long entry seeing as it's my first one and I'm sort of recording what my life is like right now. First of all, the physical stuff. I'm 18 and one month old now. I just got off the scale. 163 pounds, 0.6 body fat. Six foot one. 41 inch chest, 27 inch waist and 40 inches at the hips. No, I'm not hourglass shaped. Jinx is. I'm just sprinter shaped back there. This seems to please my wife very much but just the same she never misses a chance to make fun of me for it if, say, her mother gives me a pair of 27 inch waist jeans as a gift and I burst the rear seam the first time I wear them. I may never hear the end of that so mentioning it's no big deal. Anyways. Blue eyes, orange hair. No distinguishing marks. They're pretty much impossible for me. I heal cuts and bruises in seconds.

I'm pretty much full grown. It's so much better to be like this in a tight Flash suit than the skinny kid I was when I started. I was so embarrassed back then. I get these amazing powers through an accident and it totally fine tunes my body. That was great. But I was still just a skinny kid and I had to wear this skin tight suit. Thanks Flash. Thanks a lot. Any time I stopped and girls were around they snickered at me or giggled or tried to pinch my buns. I sometimes think crooks and villains fought even harder against me because they were ashamed to let some kid who didn't even weigh a hundred pounds take them down.

I live at Titans Tower with Virginia Allen, maiden name Murphy. I'll get to that later. If I start writing about her I'll forget all the other things I want to say. She has that affect on me. First of all, Titans Tower. It's such a cold, futuristic looking place on the inside, all stainless steel surfaces, navy blue walls and black marble floors. It's odd that it feels so comfortable to me now. But it does. There are things I don't like about it, like being cut off from the people of Jump City. I know it protects us to be on an island in the bay and it would probably be impossible to get insurance on any building next to us if we were in the middle of the city but it still feels odd. Robin, Raven and Cyborg love it this way. I'm not sure what Starfire prefers. But I know Gar agrees with me that it's weird to be cut off from the people we're supposed to protect. It makes us seem elitist. It feeds into that view of us that you see in the press sometimes, that we're "arrogant". That's the way some dopy newspaper columnist described us a week ago.

Arrogant.

It's bizarre being a public figure where everyone knows you but they only know you in this superficial way and they make all these judgements about you without having a clue as to what you're really like. Everyone here is so dedicated to helping others, it just blows my mind to see us described as "arrogant".

I'd like to see how many other guys would handle what Robin went through and give the dedication to the job that he does. Or how many girls could handle what Raven did, being told from birth that they were going to be the instrument of monstrous suffering and end up instead being a hero. Arrogant? Gods! I think every one of us has some kind of family tragedy in his or her past yet we're taking these abilities we have and giving our lives to helping out anyone and everyone who needs it. Arrogant? We risk getting killed by psychos with powers almost the equal of ours over and over. I couldn't tell you how many times we've had a no holds barred fight with some HIVE splinter group or Brotherhood of Evil faction paroled by those stupid french courts and dragged our butts back to the Tower only to run right back out before we even sleep to fight another bunch like that or to save the residents of a burning apartment complex. Arrogant? Un-fucking-believable!

I guess part of it's jealousy. Who the hell are they to have super speed, or be able to morph into any animal or have hexing powers or fly and throw starbolts?! I guess that's a natual human thing. Really, who am I to deserve to have the abilities I have? Was I the best 11 year old kid out there? Probably not. But however it came down to me, it did. Still, I understand the feeling. I don't get too worked up over that Punk'd Titans web site that has all those pictures and videos of us any time we tripped or stumbled or somebody beat us. Robin hates it. He's sure a villain's behind it. Probably Control Freak he says. He wants to get IPO addesses and names. I don't get that worked up about it. But I was always more of a wiseass than Dick. And I was their feature video when it started. If I can shrug off them showing that footage of me getting turned into a lemur by Gorilla Grodd, Robin ought to be able to overlook a few clips of him tripping or getting thrown into some mud. Stupid Grodd and his change all humans into apes plans. It's like all he does. Talk about your one trick ponies. Anyway, he got most of the Justice League that time but me, being a 29th century boy genetically and a Flash, the ray somehow only made me a lemur, which isn't even a monkey at all, more like a cousin to a raccoon, I think. Not that I particularly enjoyed being shrunk to a third my size, covered in hair and having a three foot long tail sprouting over my buns. Although, I was only like that for a day and a half.

Allright, where was I? One of the few bad things about being able to type super fast is that it can be too easy to get caught up in stream of consciousness kinds of rambling. Jinx said one way to do this was to write as though speaking or explaining to another person. Oh yeah, Titans Tower. Jinx and I share a room, 1307. Raven's in the room to the right, Beast Boy the room to the left. Cyborg's got a corner room, Starfire another corner and Robin's on the other side of the building. He wanted the sun to come up in his room in case he wasn't already awake. As if that could ever happen. It's a great place to live. And living here, my whole food thing is taken care of for me. I get paid a monthly stipend like the rest of us but the food is complimentary, which is great for me. Six or seven meals a day can take a bit out of your budget. It was so ridiculous when I first became Kid Flash. Sometimes I could handle most everything about the whole deal except my own appetite. I'd get so hungry. My god. I think I might've turned villain for a cheeseburger sometimes. When I had the junior high schedule where we ate lunch first!? By the end of the day I'd be dying. Finally, I told Flash and he and Aunt Iris started giving me extra money to buy food that my mother wouldn't have to know about.

Poor Mr. Chen! But, hey, the sign out front said "All you can eat Buffet". The first few times I went into the Beijing Buffet, he just looked at me funny. Reed thin redhead goes back for seconds and thirds and fourths and fifths and . . . Then he took to patting me down. It must've looked to the other customers like he thought the skinny kid in the big gangbanger style pants must have a gun. But that wasn't it. I think he thought maybe I was shoveling rice and dumplings into a bag somewhere under my oversized shirt and pants and taking 'em home. He seemed relieved that I wasn't a thief but after he realized how skinny I really was from patting me down he started sitting across the aisle from me and staring at me as I wolfed down six or seven full plates of food. "Where you pit it aw, Daygrow?" he finally shouted at me, which was a bit much. My hair's orange, but not dayglo. I just smiled and said I was a growing boy. He said I should have grown to 300 pounds already and threatened to not let me back in. But, finally, he limited me to 4 plates worth. So, I'd pile my plate high in a pyramid of rice, crab, chicken and beef. And I made sure nobody ever got away with robbing Mr. Chen.

At Titans Tower, Robin handles all the procurements. He's the details guy. Everyone's supposed to email him suggestions or preferences. I usually forget. I'm not very picky anyway. But it's great. It's almost like it's magical for me. I zip to the fridge and there are some new goodies there just about every day. I never tell Gar this, but his vegetarian stuff is mostly horrible. I eat some of it now and then to be nice to him. He's such a good guy. I wouldn't want to slam him like that. He's always going back and forth with Cy about it and eating some of it's a way to stay neutral. Some of the sprouts are okay. But that tofu stuff is evil. I think it's distilled from that goo that makes up Plasmus or something like that. Almost as bad is when Starfire tries to cook. You get these casseroles where the noodles are supposed to be in some kind of gravy but they're swimming in mustard and they're not really noodles they're some kind of Tameranean things, "wertgrops". Can anything actually taste good with a name like "wertgrop"? Raven doesn't eat much but makes these great exotic teas. You always want to share a pot with Raven. Cyborg has his thing with waffles. The others make fun of him but I'm cool with it. Unobjectionable, easy to prepare carbohydrates? I'm a Flash. I've got to be okay with that. The surprise cook of us all is Jinx. She doesn't cook often because she'd rather die than get pigeonholed as some happy homemaker for the Teen Titans. But she's great. You give her a few simple ingredients and somehow she whips up some incredible souffle. She's all hush hush about it but I think she did more than her share of the cooking for the HIVE Five. Unlike those dopes (sorry See-More!) she wasn't going to eat pizza every day.

In addition to free food, we get use of one of the biggest TV screens in the world. We get beta copies of all the best games. I'm not that much into them, not like Gar and Cy. Even Gar's backed off a bit. But we had Halo4 when Halo3 was just starting to come out. We have a pool and a tennis court on our roof. It's a pretty sweet life. But, I think everyone here deserves it. We put our lives on the line all the time.

You have Cyborg, our strength guy and our electronics guy. If you think about it, he's Mammoth and Gizmo in one but not stupid or annoying. He's a fascinating guy. After the accident, he could have wallowed in self pity. He not only got himself back to normal human functionality. He made himself much more capable. Much more. Now he saves other people so they don't have to wallow in self pity. As strong as Robin's will is, Cyborg's is just as strong. It's just different. Robin's about the fight whereas Cyborg's a relentless will to build, to create, to improve things. Every time you turn around he's added some new feature to his armor or increased the power of some weapon or made some sensory scanning feature more sensitive. He casts these mischievous glances at me in the training room sometimes as though to say, "I'll find a way to deal with you, Wally. I'll find a way." He'll end up being as powerfull as the rest of us put together some day.

But for now, the most powerful might be Raven. It's hard to say. But for all her power, I mostly feel sorry for her. She's always so downbeat. Her default assumption about everything is that the worst will happen. I know she had that whole, terrible situation with her father. But the Titans got her past that. She doesn't have to expect the worst any more. Attitudes like that are self-fulfilling prophecies. Expect the worst and eventually you get it. Still, she's a terrific fighter. But she has terrible luck with guys. Malchior? Yikes. Dream guy turns out to be a dragon. And Aqualad. Um, was she the only one who didn't realize? Then there was Beast Boy. She gives him the cold shoulder when he's the 5 foot 2 funny looking little dude. Then, last year he has a weird growth spurt, shoots up to 6 feet tall, bigger jaw too, all of a sudden he's a total green pretty boy. And he grows up in other ways too. You could almost see her say to herself, "Hey, wait!". But it was too late. He made it work with Terra. She even glanced my way, but I have Jinx. She's really beautiful in a certain exotic way. I wish things could work out for her. I always wondered about maybe her and Kid Wykkyd. But Jinx says Elliot's very shy, that maybe he's not ready for her. It's too bad. I'd really like to see her experience a long term sort of happiness.

The next most powerful might be Starfire. Again, it's hard to say. Everyone's abilities are so different, just like we're all so different as people. Sometimes you forget about those differences. Other times you realize how great they are.

In retrospect, it's no surprise that she and Robin broke up. It's a funny thing how your perspective changes when you're in a relationship. When I was a lonely 14 and a half year old boy, no friends, never mind girlfriends, I wouldn't have thought that I could diagnose a relationship's problems. But sometimes I do now. Maybe that's presumptuous to think that because Jinx and I work so well that I can see what should work well with other couples. But Starfire was just too emotional for Dick. They couldn't have quiet time or down time. Everything was a crisis with her. Everything was a test. She was constantly hectoring him for this or that perceived slight or sign of lack of caring. Everything was a test of his love. Everything. Maybe it was the princess thing, too. She's a princess, after all. She was probably accustomed to people always focusing on her. But that's not the way Dick is. She saw every single thing he did through the prism of "our relationship, Robin". That was just way too much for him.

He's not a cruel person at all. He's actually sort of kind if you get to know him. But you have to have a different scale with him. He's not trying to hurt anyone. He just doesn't have much of him that's devoted to expressions of being nice or avoiding things that might be interpreted as uncaring. That's just not him. So, you let him step on your toes a bit and you develop tough toes, or something like that, as part of being his friend. Believe me. I know. Dick's my best friend and he'd ignore me to type out a new case file any day of the week. It's just the way he is. It's not cruelty or dislike. You can't get upset about it and you can't wait for him to feel all flushed with warm fuzzy thoughts to put aside all his work and do something with you. He just doesn't work that way. But if you reset your expectations from emo boy to boy wonder, it's fine. You even get to a point where him patting you on the shoulder is the equivalent of some teary hug from anyone else and it feels great.

But you you have to physically separate him from the files and keyboards and stuff. It's just a different standard. But he's a great guy. Even Jinx grudgingly admits he's not the guy the HIVE thought he was. The HIVE kids absolutely hated him. Hated.

When he and Starfire broke up, there were some shouting matches and as in most such situations, the other friends in the circle had to pick a side to some degree. Did you eat any of that casserole she made becomes picking a side. Did you write out some case files? Even just who are you talking to or spending more time with becomes picking a side. Even if you don't think either party's to blame or intend to pick a side. You end up picking a side anyway. Well, I'm Dick's best friend, so it was obvious where I was going. I was still nice to Starfire. She kind of looked at me warily those weeks but I made it clear to her that I had nothing against her. I just wanted to help my best friend Dick Jinx took his side, too, not very openly, never in a way that was much critical of Starfire though she did mumble to me, once, while looking at Starfire complaining to Raven across the great room, "Good luck finding a guy who's got the emotion dial turned up to 11 all the time like you, honey."

Gar sort of took her side, Raven too. But both admitted to me that they sort of felt they had to. Jinx and I were "on the side of the Robin". Cyborg just pulled back from the whole situation. He was pretty smooth sidestepping the whole thing. Lot of sonic cannon work and phased plasma gun heat signature identification to do those weeks. Lots of it. Smart Cyborg. Gar and Rae felt like they had to hang with her to sort of make things even.

It was a problem for the team for a while there. But we still went out on missions like pros and protected the City. Robin called out attack formations the same as always with no change in how Starfire was used. Things were kind of winding down, too. Then, East visited us and Bee was all over it. Gods, it was like an episode of Oprah! The situation had almost run its course and she had to butt in and make like it was a big crisis and cause this big scene. Hell, she made it a crisis! She did! I had my suspicions about that. And when I muttered them to Jinx there in the great room beside the others watching Starfire cry while a furious Robin tried to stare a hole through Bee, she agreed. It makes one team's leader look better if the other team is seen as being in some kind of "crisis", especially if the other team's "crisis" is a problem with its leader.

I even mentioned a hint of our suspicions to Bee as she was following Robin back to his room. She did NOT like that. Uh uh. The next time I tried to schedule another training session for Mas and Menos, she had an excuse for every time I suggested. Um, we're training then. Um, I think they're going to S.T.A.R. Labs for a checkup that day. We might be meeting the Mayor of Steel City on that day. And on and on. Finally I just stared at her on the giant comm screen. They need to work with other speedsters, I told her, irrespective of their leader's moods. Then I signed off.

As for being "on the side of the Robin", well, there were certainly more warm and fuzzy places one could be. I gave Dick some room. I didn't go vibrating through his door and hugging him right away. I could see where he was going after the breakup.

Shutdown. Total emotional bat shutdown.

Opening up hadn't worked. It'd only gotten him hurt. The doors slammed shut and you needed a frigging security code to get in, a code he wasn't handing out to anyone, including me. At first we didn't see that much of him. He'd be in his room or down on the 6th floor at the backup communications center where he could process files without people going by on the way to the kitchen or the great room on 13 and 14. And, like always, he did his workout starting at 5:30 AM. No competition from the rest of us then, at least until Jinx had her great idea.

Funny how her ideas usually require that I do something uncomfortable.

Wally! Why don't you get up at 5:30 and train with him?

This got a deserved hostile glare back from me.

Even if you only get to say a word or two, it'll be good for him! I looked at her, again, like she was nuts. Between books and making love and talking, we never get to sleep before two thirty. Two at the earliest. Yet, there I was, five thirty in the morning, sleeping so contentedly, spooning with Jinx and the stupid alarm goes off. Then she untangles from me. And I get a pale gray foot planted against my butt and I'm kicked off my own bed! Luckily I don't have to put on much much and I'm a Flash. Ten seconds later I was in the workout room with Robin. The sacrifices I make!

Dick's expression was so, I don't know, closed. I couldn't even be Wally with my friend Dick Grayson like I'd been for all those months before that. He wasn't even ready for that.

Total shutdown.

I don't think there even was a Dick Grayson right then. There was Robin. There was his crime fighting. And that was it. Dick Grayson had emotions. He got hurt. He was out. There was only Robin now. And an emotion free Robin at that. I worked out with him, followed him around the circuit of workout machines and spotted him on the bench press. When we were all done, I gave him a pat on the back before we went hit the showers. It seemed so ridiculously short of what I wanted to say but it was still too much. He gave me an odd look like he couldn't possibly understand why I would do that.

I did the same damn thing for two weeks! Jinx got a kick out of it, out of kicking my buns out of our bed at that insane time every morning. "Out you go, speedster!", she'd say with a laugh waking me out of groggy half sleep, barely affected by the alarm going off, and knocking me to the floor. I'd come back there at 8:30 after almost 3 hours of working out and she'd be blissfully asleep amongst our covers, a smile curling her lips just knowing that I'd come back to see her so wonderfully rested.

It was a slow progression. By the end of the two weeks, I'd gotten all the way to saying "Good workout, Dick" as I gave him that single pat on the back. Amazing catharsis, huh? Tectonic movements proceed more quickly. But that's the way it had to be with him. My best friend. It was kind of funny, even at the best times with him, though. He could be so uptight about certain things. I knew about Slade, but there must have been villains that he faced with Batman who wanted his little butt, too. Maybe there were some psychos they chased who were gay. I'm not sure exactly but Dick had a serious problem with the idea of gay anything. When I gave him a hug, I could feel him, after about a second each time, recoil. I mean, with me, Kid Flash, not Speedy or Aqualad. He was much more uptight around them, maybe even more with Speedy than with Aqualad. Garth made him uncomfortable. But at least he seemed to sort of intellectually understand it. Okay, he's homosexual. Fine. But Speedy?! Mr. Affections in all Directions, as Jinx called him? Robin looked at him like he was an alien species. He even got uptight at how friendly I was with both of them, especially Garth who is just about the nicest guy in the world. "You know, he wants to screw you,don't you?" he'd helpfully and tactfully inform me. Uh, yeah, Dick. I realize that. "And you let him hug you?" To which, the answer was usually that I'd hugged him. I don't know if Dick thought Speedy or Aqualad would bend me over the railing on the roof before getting in their T-Jet and flying back east or something but those are the sorts of things he'd say. I could upset him sometimes just by hugging him so that the skin of our ears or cheeks rubbed together. This is how uptight he was even in the best of times.

So, there was that extra complication in trying to get my friend to open up again, emotionally, at least to the degree he had been. Nothing could have even the most insane possible interpretation of it that came out as gay or anything like that. After the couple weeks of painfully early workouts, I vibrated through his door into his room one night to find him typing extra case file information into the computer.

Case files.

God. He made such a big deal out of them. But we never really used them. That's the thing. We'd get a call that Plasmus, for example, was running amok in the warehouse district or Dr. Chang was seen outside Jump City College and what would we do? Did we all sit down and review case files? NFW! We ran out and took care of him. And the information we had was whatever we remembered in our heads as we went out there. Still, Robin acted like they were this all important thing. The Case Files Grail! The Shroud of the Case Files of Turin! He probably thinks there was a Case Files Crusade somewhere around 1000 A.D. Maybe moslems keeping christians from holy filing cabinets in Jerusalem. Something like that. But, really, it was just something on which to focus his mania. But I'm cool with it. I understand. It's what he is. It's just not what I am.

He told me how he feels being the guy without powers who has to keep up with all of us superspeed, superstrong, morphing, flying, hexing types. It makes sense in a way. But that first night, I sat there on his bed while he typed away and the only words we exchanged were him telling me I should knock first, as I entered, and me saying sorry. Not one other word. Not one.

It sounds stupid to someone who doesn't know him, like you, oh journal.. Why didn't I just start talking to him? But Robin puts out this intense wall of silence, this overpowering vibe that interaction with you is NOT desired. In the past, sometimes, I'd pick him up from his chair and run him up to the pool at super speed and throw him in, or another time, I left him in Raven's room. The smell of brimstone was in the hallway for days after that one. It really was the only way to separate him from what he saw as his work. He literally could not do it himself. He doesn't have the off switch. But if you did, he would actually talk and joke with you like a great friend. I don't get that. If you had a great time laughing and joking with me up at the pool, then, don't you choose to go up to the pool now and then? But he can't do that. He can't stop himself from doing his case files and things. You have to stop him. Starfire never got that, somehow. It wasn't that he didn't care. There was no degree of caring that mattered. He couldn't go from point A to point B. And getting mad at him for it was unfair to him.

But he couldn't stand the disruption then. That's what I sensed. He seemed sort of brittle after the breakup with Starfire. So, I spent four hours watching him type. Crazy. But that's all I did. I watched him type. But that's Dick. And if I wanted my friend back to the way he'd been a few months before then I just sensed somehow that this was how I had to proceed. He'd had enough of being told he wasn't sufficiently emotional by Starfire. He wouldn't have accepted me bullying him into being more open. Things would have to proceed at his pace.

The next night it was the same thing. It was so frustrating. I could have been with Jinx. Instead I was in Robin's room looking at his back, his gelled hair and cape as he typed. I didn't even get a word out of him that time. I'd knocked before vibrating through the door. Not one word in 4 hours. None. Zero. I wanted to laugh out loud at the situation but barely held back. The tidal wave, the bursting of the emotional dam the third night was him saying to me, "You write really good case files when you bother" without ever looking away from the screen. I said something about how convenient it was to be able to type at super speed but I'm not sure he heard me. But, hey, nine words was like the great american novel or an epic poem at that point.

I kept at it another two weeks till finally, we could exchange a few sentences, at the end of which, I had enough and told him, "Hey, throw me a bone, here, Grayson. It's been a month here now that my friend disengaged from contact with me and everyone else. And I don't think I did anything wrong. I think I was loyal to my friend. And now I've gotten up at five thirty in the freaking morning for two weeks to be around my friend and then I spent every night for a couple more weeks watching my friend type these stupid case files just so I can be around him and show him how important his friendship is to me. But I'm a different kind of person than my friend. I like to talk to people and I like to hug them too. Out of respect for our friendship, can I get a hug here?"

He paused and sighed, finally stood up from his desk and we hugged. It felt great to have my pal back.

Then I ran him up to the roof and threw him in the pool. It was just like old times.

Gotta go, communicator's beeping a mission alarm.


	2. Chapter 2

Didn't mean for this to take so long to get to this chapter. Schedules. Distractions. Yadda yadda yadda. 90 percent of what I wanted just want to post it. Yadda yadda yadda. You've heard it before.

July 14, 2007

A Sladebot, oh great Journal.

A fricking Sladebot.

That's what pulled me away the other day when I was making an entry. A Sladebot got activated in the warehouse district and started trying to take everything from a National Guard armory.

We have no idea how many of the stupid frigging things are out there just waiting for their timers to go off. The goddam psycho's records were inconsistent about how many there were. One set of files said there were seven Sladebots out there. So far five have turned on and gone off on Slade-ish rampages. But another set of files implied that there were 12. Nothing we could find ever said where they were hidden. It really sets off Robin every time.

He's glad I killed Slade. But I know that somewhere in the back of his mind he'd give almost anything to have been the one to do it.

Okay, oh journal. So, last time I was going over the other Titans and my thoughts about them. I finished up with my best friend, Robin. Who's left?

There's Beast Boy, of course. It might be Changeling by next week. Talk about different from Robin. Gar's totally emotionally open. Doesn't make him better or worse, just different from Robin. He seemed like kind of the class clown when I first joined the team but he's a lot more mature now. I think it was always a bit of a front. Reading between the lines of what he's told me, I think that guy Mento, who runs Doom Patrol, was a real jerk who didn't look after Gar very well. Jinx says I'm too predisposed to see everybody's dad as failing him and get mad about it. But Mento isn't Gar's actual father. Still, he should have tried to act like one. And who's she to talk? Anyway, he should have treated little Gar better, like a dad and not just like some impersonal team leader. How do tools like him and Batman not see how rough things are at a time like that for Gar or Dick? So, yeah, part of Gar's response was sort of nervous humor to dissipate all the tension and insecurity he felt.

Well, he's really changed in the three plus years I've been here. He went from being the cute little brother adored by all the fangirls to being, well, to being a pretty boy adored by all the fangirls. About a year and a half ago, he was 5'2" and even skinnier than me with that funny scratchy voice. Now, he's 6 feet tall and the Discover channel wants him to narrate a nature video. He looks so different. At the last young heroes get together on my birthday a couple weeks back, I heard Argent turn to Jinx and giggle, "Look at him now! It's like they took a guy off the catwalk at a fashion show and painted him green."

That's not so far off. I mean, he is a model, sort of. Cyborg almost died laughing. A couple months back he was gone from the Tower for an afternoon. He wouldn't tell us why. Then, a few weeks later, there was something in the paper about Jump City's own Beast Boy appearing in a car company's commercial for its new environmentally sensitive car. We found out when it was supposed to air and all gathered in the great room. Gar tried to go to his room but I sped him back to the great room. Right after one with those spots with the two kids everyone wants to kill, ("I'm into nuggets, y'all!") came the ad for the car. It zipped along winding roads and then they talked about how it was good for the environment. Then, in the last few seconds, the announcer said "Being green can be beautiful" and there, leaning on one of the cars, was Gar, in a dark suit and white shirt but no tie, grinning at something. Everyone razzed him for a good long time, especially Cy.

"Gar?!"

"Beautiful?!?!"

"Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!! I thought Cyborg might destroy some of his circuits with his laughter. But, well, we guys aren't even supposed to say this when it's hopelessly obvious, oh journal, but Gar really had become quite the pretty boy. Good for him.

And better than that, he'd gotten the girl he wanted.

Not Raven.

Terra.

It's all very hush hush, oh journal, so don't breathe a word of it. The gossip pages don't really know anything about it. And we're going to keep it that way. He can't have any of that, none of that junk they write about me and Jinx. Which two Jump City teenagers was seen at clubs last Friday? Hint, orange and pink. None of that shit.

Gar wasn't even supposed to tell us about it. But,hey, how much can you hide from a super speedster? We're a very respectful bunch, we speedsters. But we do a great job of tailing people when we want to. He was suddenly so happy in such a, I don't know, I guess I'd call it a deep way. It wasn't laughing and joking all the time. It was this quiet smile. All of a sudden he projected this quiet confidence all the time.

Sooooooooo obvious.

Robin just gave me a glance. I knew what it meant. See what's up with him. So, I did. But I lied to Robin. I made up some story about Gar getting another modeling job and being all full of himself at being thought of as such a pretty boy. Something like that. But that wasn't it at all.

I went to see Gar in his room. I told him. I said, "Gar. I followed you. I saw." Even though I hadn't seen anything. I had followed him to this one house over and over. But, I'm no perv. I didn't try and see anything more. I didn't go in. I thought I might get Gar to spill. And he did.

He looked around, as though there might be someone else there in his own room, and then asked, "How much does Jinx mean to you?"

I shrugged. Wasn't it obvious? "Everything."

Gar said that that's what this meant to him and that I had to promise not to tell anyone. I promised. I don't think you count, oh great journal. He almost seemed relieved to be telling someone. He grinned ear to ear.

It was Terra. Despite everything, there were still embers there. He'd tried to get back together with her after the whole Paris fight against the Brotherhood of Evil. But she couldn't deal with any part of the Titans and villains and all of it. She was all but dead for months and months. She didn't want any part of it ever again. None. The thing was, Terra liked him. And, he was still crazy about her. But she only wanted Garfield Logan, not Beast Boy. Eventually, he realized that. There was kind of a cooling off period where he left her alone.

Then, he said he approached her modestly, humbly, and with the perfect gift. The gift was crucial, he said. He sort of smirked at his brilliance in choosing that gift. I asked him what it was, what was so smart? But he wouldn't tell me. I tried to guess like 20 times. They were good guesses, I thought, but he kept laughing and saying "no". I vaguely remembered seeing him in the great room finishing up the wrapping of something. Naturally curious as we Flashes are, I picked it up off the counter. It was heavy, hard and kind of round. The wrapping paper was taped to it a bit haphazardly. I told Gar it felt heavy and hard as a rock. He smiled. But he wouldn't tell me just what it was. That might've been it. But that could've been the gift he gave to Mento. I'm not sure.

Anyway, he said that as perfect as it was, as much as she liked it, she was still sort of noncommital about things. He came back to the Tower. He didn't try to contact her. He let her call the Tower. 10 days later, he said she did. I guess things were on a very strict basis with them. No powers, nothing relating to hero life was to touch her. Nothing. Gar agreed. I hooked him up with Zatanna and she cast a spell that, when he was with Terra, his skin isn't green. So, they can go out in public and have the freedom of any other happy teen couple. Things have changed so much for him. Oh, and now he's thinking of having everyone call him Changeling. He says that answering to Beast "Boy" is kind of demeaning now that he's 17 years old. Tell me about it. I don't really want to keep being called "Kid" Flash either.

I wish we could go on some double dates but Terra's totally against being seen with heroes.

Of course, Jinx used to be, too.

Okay, I just sighed and stared at her sitting in the sunshine of our window reading. I zone out sometimes looking at her, oh journal. Or, I think of a million different things looking at her. And only half of 'em are sex related. Don't look at me like that, oh journal. It's true. Right now I'm thinking of how beautiful she is, even more so for how she got here. Isn't a beautiful flower that you find in the wild on a hillside lovelier, somehow, than the same flower grown in a pot in a greenhouse? She didn't grow up a princess like Wonder Girl with everything set out for her. The world tried to ruin her. And she said 'Fuck you!' back to the whole world. The world called her a freak instead of sighing at her striking eyes or her perfect pink lips or her hourglass shape, her round little butt or perky little um you knows. The world totally got that wrong. Totally. And, the world called her a witch instead of gifted. The world called her an evil leader instead of strong willed and sophisticated. Actually, the world said 'Fuck you!' to her first. She just had the guts to say it right back.

Nobody says things like that to her now. They'd have to say it to me, too. I'd do anything to protect her. Anything. I love her. But it's not like sappy songs or chick flicks make it feel. It's more real than that. There's laughter and lust and competition over some things, sarcasm back and forth and loving how smart and strong she is. It's not all gloss. There's a . . a texture to this life together. It's hard to explain. And there's this tremendous sense of "us". And as perfectly comfortable as life is with her, there's still novelty and excitement all the time.

At first it almost bothered me. It almost annoyed me that I didn't have a clue about what she might be thinking sometimes or why she would do or say something. I didn't understand her loyalty to Mammoth, Wykkyd and See-More. I didn't understand how she could be such a jumble of contradictiions. Gods, what a jumble of extremes she is. She might be the most vicious fighter of any of us Titans. But she luxuriates in bubble baths and reading in the special window seat in our room. She relishes seeing what things she can destroy with pink hex energy. She loves it. But she gets upset if the lace or ruffles of her outfits gets torn or dirty. She's not the slightest bit reserved in bed with me. But she will not speak about 'us' in any way to any of the press and walks away if they ask a risque question. She can be brutal with sarcasm toward me but if Gar or Cy or Robin say anything to me, she's likely to destroy 'em with some razor sharp line.

It bothered me, at first, that I didn't completely understand her. And then, it just sort of washed over me. Acceptance. I wondered why I was trying so hard. I just sort of accepted it. It didn't matter if I didn't understand exactly why she is the way she is and does what she does. I just accepted it. It wasn't a plan. It wasn't some decision to go along with some alcoholics anonymous thing about accepting what you can't change. I only realized it after the fact. She had surprised me with her reaction to something and caught myself just smiling at it.

Maybe, oh journal, I'm such a nerd that I'm kind of obsessed with figuring things out. The whole superhero biz doesn't exactly suppress that, you know, what with all the pressure to do detective work. It's a part of me. Fine. I'm a nerd. I love figuring things out. I feel a need to understand. But I love her so much I just set it aside. I don't need to know. I don't need to understand. She's Jinx, my wife. Does that really have to be explained?

It probably can't be explained, anyway. Some of the things she does are so off the wall. For instance, the storytelling. She tells me stories. Horrible stories. She tells me these reach into your gut and pull out your spleen emotionally devastating stories. True stories. Teachers calling her a freak. Kids all in a circle around her in the schoolyard, shouting and calling her names. Not being treated like a human being. Nowhere to go. Everything but a parade of villagers with torches to burn her family's double wide. And, she tells me these stories at the most incredible times. I don't know if it's intentional for the contrast. She's such a creature of extremes. Or maybe the point is to tell them when they have the least power, when the feeling between us makes them more irrelevant to her life than at any other time. Whatever the reason, sometimes after we make love and we lie down to sleep, me holding her in my arms, the two of us warm with affection as much as literal heat. I'll just settle into a comfortable breathing rhythm and then she'll start. No warning, just bam! Spleen ripping story.

"One time in first grade . . "

And these stories just tear me up. The shit she went through! A couple times I've gasped. And my eyes get . . . But, it's understandable, journal.. Just a little girl. God. She showed me this picture of her in first grade. Six years old. It's one of the few pictures ever of her not in 'Fuck you, world!' mode. This beautiful little girl with pale pale skin and pink hair and her expression is trusting and hopeful. She's got her eyebrows a little raised as if asking, "It's gonna be okay, right?" She said the photographer talked her into that mood and that expression, a rare glimpse of vulnerable young Jinx.

I almost wish she hadn't shown me that picture of that beautiful little girl because it kills me to think of people ganging up on her and all calling her names, throwing things at her and trying to ruin her. I tense up and when she finishes I always kiss the back of her neck and hold her tight. I tell her that no one will ever hurt her again. And somehow it's like she discards each terrible episode from her life at that moment. She goes on right away but I'm totally tensed and rigid, flexing every muscle. It almost seems like it's harder on me. I know she knows because she usually runs a hand over me feeling flexed muscle below my skin. She can feel what it does to me to think of her being hurt and all those assholes pushing her to be the way she was in response. But that's one of the things about being with someone, being with them all the way, that you have to experience or you don't appreciate it. I didn't.

But, I can get hurt now and I don't like getting hurt. I mean, I don't want to be slammed into a brick wall or electrocuted or punched in the face. But I can move past me getting hurt. When . . when someone hurts Jinx? I go wild. I can't take it. I just can't bear to see her hurt. And it's not just me. I thought she might hex Cinderblock to ashes when he got lucky and smacked me into the side of a warehouse. I didn't know masonry could burn, not just smolder but burn. And what a smell it gives off!

Well, she's spent most of her life reacting to assholes, and giving them back what they deserved. She was strong enough to do it. I don't know if even she knows how it affected her. I mean, she's honest with herself, but she's got all these habits of being aggressive and guarded and just having things bounce off her that she picked up at the academy and before that. So, one moment she might be really open and trusting and the next kind of wary the way she learned to be as some habit, some pattern of doing things or looking at things she'd built up.

I know, guys are supposed to want to fuck then get the hell out of there. But even when we just started seeing each other I never wanted to leave. I wanted to hold her. She was so fascinating and precious to me. I wanted to feel her skin against mine, even not . . . doing it. I just wanted to hold her, beautiful, brilliant Jinx who cared about me. Jinx looked at me so funny that first time, both of us were grinning ear to ear, so happy. It'd been great. I zipped back from the bathroom and wrapped my arms around her. She felt so good. Then, she got this slightly puzzled look on her face. I could see it in the mirror. We dropped down to the bed but she got back up.

"What're you doing?" she asked.

"What do you mean what am I doing? I'm holding you."

She gave me that skeptical Jinx look. It's practically the Jinx look, and actually asked,"You're not trying to control me, are you?"

I jumped to my feet. "What?! Of course not. I-I just like holding you."

She eyed me through a squint, then sighed and muttered "okay".

I wrapped my arms around her again and we dropped down to rest on our sides on the warm sheets again. I relaxed completely, breathing in the smell of her skin and pressed my lips to the back of her neck. But I could feel that she wasn't relaxed. She was tense. A few seconds later, she jumped up out of my arms again and gave me another of those Jinx looks.

"What now?!"

"If-if you think that I'm your-your damsel in distress and you're the-the knight in shining . . spandex or something and that you're protecting me well, you can just forget it because I'm strong enough to-"

"Jinx!" I jumped up and took her by the shoulders. "I . . . I just like holding you!"

Her Jinx look of skepticism flared then slowly melted. " . . . really . . . ?" she asked in a tone I'd never heard from her. Her voice was so . . innocent, somehow, saying that one word.

I quickly wrapped my arms around her. "This doesn't feel good to you?" I whispered.

She sort of stammered out a sigh. We dropped down to the bed again. This time she relaxed.

"Well, you are kind of warm. It's . . . good."

The truth is, I am warm, I mean, literally. My body temperature's 100.6 normally. It's a Flash thing. Probably has something to do with being a living singularity, with my body being a sort of doorway to another dimension from which all this energy comes into ours and powers my super speeding. But Jinx's temperature is normally 96.6. Might be that her powers are sort of electric based and electric charge is more efficient at low temperatures. Who knows? Whatever the reason, it feels really good to us to be together. Her slight coolness never stops feeling good to me. It's like it's what I really need. I think she feels the same way about my being warm. She won't say it though.

I can't really complain. A lot of times I don't say things. A lot of times neither of us says anything. We . . we have a weird thing between us, an unspoken understanding. Sometimes we'll talk and talk and talk. She's a book nerd like me. We'll talk and talk about this funny book or that hilarious story or this amazing novella. Did you read that Patricia Highsmith thing I gave you? Oh gods, that Letter to the Earth was fricking great! How 'bout that Flaubert, huh? Jesus is a giant canary! Oh gods. And on and on and on. We don't like all the same books and stories but there's a lot of crossover and we at least accept each other's different choices. There's nobody more challenging to talk to or more fun to talk to than Jinx.

But a lot of the time we don't say a thing, not a syllable to each other. We've gone up on the roof in the middle of a raging thunderstorm and then come down to our room and made love all night long and not said a single fucking word the whole time. We have a whole shorthand language of glances between us now. We do it in clubs all the time. The music's pounding in your ears. You can't hear anyone 5 feet away. Doesn't matter to us. I see some goth fanboy go up to her and gush about how cool she is. You're this. You're all that. Yadda yadda yadda. Seen it a hundred times. And she'll just glance over to me. And I know that that glance means "You belive this wuss, Speedster? And what is with that shirt. Gothboy in polo? WTF? Meet me by the kitchen exit."

I'll go there and she'll appear 30 seconds later and we take off without it being even the least bit noteworthy. Her mother talked about it too. "Say something!" she shouted at us once from the porch of her farm and then, later that night she wanted us to stop talking about The Devil's Dictionary and H.L. Mencken and go to sleep. Eventually we did sleep.

I'm looking at her in the window right now. She's got on one of those intricately lacy blouses she's so fond of, that just begs you to touch her. And she's reading from some old leather bound book. The sun's shining down on her pink hair and her cat eyes are focsed on it with her entire soul. She gives a little sigh of comfort at the window seat and the sun and everything and . . well . .

I've saved hundreds of people. Maybe it's thousands. I've pulled 'em out of buildings and cars and trains. I once super sped into a crashing plane and pulled people out before they were crushed or burnt. I've caught bullets in the air and taken uzis out of killers' hands before they could shoot the bullets. I've saved little girls and little boys, old men and women, strong and weak and short and tall. But more important than getting any of them out of the path of some bullet or away from some flames was getting the little pink haired six year old girl who looked up hopefully into that school photo camera here to the window, where she belongs. I love her.


End file.
